2004-2005. Commissioned by Mark Porter at The Guardian. Designed with Paul Barnes. Available for licensing from Commercial Type.

From the very beginning, designing a new sans serif for The Guardian felt like a losing proposition. The Guardian has become synonymous with Helvetica. But once the Egyptian had emerged as the primary display face, we were free to draw the Sans as a backup face, and I think it's really effective in this role. It's clearly made out of the same parts as the Egyptian, so it combines comfortably with it, but doesn't grab undue attention. If they do end up using it for most of the magazine headlines, as we discussed at one point, I think it will do a good job of maintaining the same look while being noticeably different.

As much as we wanted this face to look like a classic Doric - after all, we designed it using the exact same methods the old typefounders used to make their sans serifs - it ended up looking very Dutch, with a hint of Johnston. And as much as we didn't want it to look anything like Gill Sans, the influence crept in here and there.